The Electronic Entertainment Expo happened this past week, and while I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was the BEST E3 EVER like a lot of the games press, I will say that it was better than the last few years.

But as with anything that is purportedly the best ever, there was some really, really awful things that happened at this years E3, and Reaxxion is here to enlighten our dear readers.

1. Publishers and developers making me feel old

There was a definite air of a generational shift at this year’s E3. For everything new and exciting for younger gamers, there was an avalanche of old things (and people) popping up.

To the younger gamers I feel like an apology is in order from us of the older generation. You see, back in the olden days we gave women who were 6’s and 7’s (at best) a pass and made them out to be WAY hotter because they were paid to pretend to like games and be awkward. Morgan Webb falls squarely in that territory (see also Felicia Day). But I‘m biased since I’ve always been a Diane Mizota man anyways.

Oh look, she is touching a games device! SO HOT!

We had Sony pretty much come out on a tennis ball-footed walker as they introduced Shenmue III and a Final Fantasy VII HD remake. Microsoft is staking Holiday 2015 on finally caving in on backwards compatibility so that Xbox 360 owners will finally move over to the Xbox One. Nintendo was pushing Mario Maker… which as a Super Mario Bros. 3 super fan made me very excited…but again, I’m an old man gamer…so of course I would!

While there was a fair bit of fresh content for the youngsters out there at this E3, I can’t help but wonder if they weren’t constantly going “The fuck?!” every time something… or someone… from the olden days came out and everyone lost their minds.

2. Useless middleman games punditry

With all the video content, interviews, and game writeups available from all the video game websites, why would anyone want to know what someone who isn’t even there thinks about E3? You can literally watch most of the press conferences live yourself and watch stage demos of most of the games. You don’t need some middleman telling you what’s up. What is this, 1997?

This “thoughts” video from Jim Sterling is a incoherent, rambling, mess and doesn’t have any value whatsoever because he’s not even at E3! You’d think with all that Patreon loot, he could make his way to LA, rent a Rascal to haul his pasty pudgy ass around the convention and do at least some in-person coverage!

Continuing my “all aboard the train to “Meh”-ville” disinterest in the upcoming virtual reality revolution, I listened and read several of the games press members gush on and on about how great all the virtual reality experiences at E3 were and how awesome and game changing they will be. Has no one realized that this doesn’t help sell virtual reality at all?

It’s bad enough I have to hear them keep making excuses for it’s graphical crudeness and “you just had to be there” stories about developer toadies grabbing people as they demoed VR games at E3. But spending large chunks of E3 real estate with this over-hyped novelty that isn’t going to see the light of day any time soon? Come on, games press! I know you desperately want something new, but this ain’t it.

Patrick Klepek, nestled away in Chicago, released a bevy of YouTube videos about his thoughts on E3 as well. Unlike Sterling however, not as many people are viewing his navel-gazing, which does give me some hope.

My beef though is his post “Desperate Nintendo Is The Best Nintendo.” Unfortunately, I don’t think Nintendo is in desperation mode; not at this E3, and not in recent memory as far as I’m concerned. Is the Wii U not doing as well as Nintendo people would hope? Sure, but unlike the other console makers, Nintendo is actually making a profit out it’s console. There’s nothing really on the Wii U unless you’re a Nintendo fan, but it’s still not desperation.

Those who have followed the games industry for many years have seen game companies in desperation mode. Sega in the early 2000’s is a great example.

Speaking of desperation…

3. Square Enix

It appears as though someone at Square Enix finally turned their desk chair around to find out what that burning smell was coming from for the last fourteen years and realized it was coming out of the Final Fantasy side of the building! Running down the hall, they approached a glass case that reads “Break Glass in Case of Financial Ruin,” which was housing the Final Fantasy VII HD Remake.

If this isn’t desperation, I don’t know what is! Not only that, what about all the other games that are jamming up Square Enix at the moment? Tetsuya “I-never-saw-a-character-I-couldn’t-over-design-with-zippers” Nomura isn’t busy enough with Kingdom Hearts III, on top of whatever he may or may not be doing on that other Final Fantasy game? Surely he’ll have plenty of time to direct this game and see that it gets released any time soon? Come on Sqaure Enix, get your shit together and release something NEW already!

I’d rather an HD remake of Final Fantasy VI and/or a half-assed conversion of the iPhone version of Secret of Mana over the baloney nostalgia grab that SquareEnix is pulling.

The Final Fantasy HD Remake certainly didn’t deserve this kind of reaction:

Give me a break!

4. End times prognosticating

As with any E3 that dares to soar above the very low expectations of gamers to be better than average, you have those who cry out that the end is nigh and the games industry is on its way out.

Look, I love the vast majority of YouTuber Razorfist’s work, but his constant admonitions that the games industry is on the verge of another meltdown are absurd.

His most recent prognostications that the industry is doomed because E3 had too many sequels and not enough creativity is only marginally correct if you only count AAA development. Lest we also forget: this is the games industry we’re talking about! Sequels are the bedrock of the entire entity!

Hell, my favorite game of all time is a numbered sequel, so I don’t think a seeming dearth of creativity is problematic. There‘s plenty of creativity to be had in the games industry, and it has and will always be an outlier. It’s in the independent and smaller games spaces. It’s in the AAA games, just not on a large scale. It’s definitely not going to be on display at E3, which is mostly for mainstream consumption.

I could go on for days with all the horrible things from this years E3 (especially Anita Sarkeesian’s E3 shenanigans!), but what did you think about this years show?